Oh Precious, Precious Screentime

A friend sent me this article, which gives away the important news in the exciting headline, "People Play 1900 Years of Call of Duty Multiplayer Every Day."

That's...a fair number of people playing a fair amount of Call of Duty every day. I was almost impressed, until I looked up how much TV people watch.

According to this random page I found on the internet, which must be absolutely true because I read it online (it cites A.C. Neilsen, but this page does not include the annual total, which must have been calculated separately), Americans watch 250 billion hours of TV every year. That works out to about 78,000 person-years every day, assuming I know how to work a calculator.

Those Call of Duty slackers need to step it up a few dozen times.

To give the game its due, 1,900 is a pretty good number for a single title. After all, it takes hundreds of TV channels to keep us watching 78,000 years a day.

On the other hand, the 78,000 years a day is only for the United States, while I think the Call of Duty numbers were worldwide.

On the first hand again, 1,900 is, as mentioned, only for a single title, so people play a lot more hours of video games if other titles are included. This TED Conversations page says 3 billion hours a week worldwide, which would be about 156 billion hours a year, or slightly under 49,000 years a day.

Still not close to the TV-watching numbers, but more of a contest. Except that the TV numbers are still only for the United States, and I bet people in other countries also enjoy television.

I could keep looking for numbers on the internet, but the bottom line is, people obviously need to spend more time playing video games.

Right? That's clearly the take-away here, isn't it?

My problem with that is that video games tend to demand more attention than television, so it's harder to find the 49,000 years per day that you need. Not all games, of course, but a lot of them. So if you have to do some stuff on the computer, say, you can put on a TV show at the same time and watch it with half your attention, but it's harder to do that while you're playing a game.

I bet a lot of the TV-watching numbers are from people doing other things at the same time. The true heroes are the people who watch TV and play games at the same time, and I salute them.

In closing, we spend...a fair amount of time with screens in this exciting modern world.

Monsters! Science! Giddy Joy!

You must join me in saluting an awesome article summarized by Scicurious at Scientopia. It is awesome because it looks at monsters from Dungeons and Dragons (in the course of some totally scientific research about gaze following).

I wish I'd thought of that.

Well, you can be sure that my entire future research energy is going to be dedicated to figuring out a way to make D&D relevant to some totally scientific medical library topic.

Perhaps this will give me the 'in' I need to begin my study of the information needs of liches.

You have inspired me, Levy J, Foulsham T, and Kingstone A! Time to haul out my battered research texts, by which I mean the Monster Manual and associated monster-heavy tomes. There are a lot of monster books published for the d20 System under the Open Gaming License, and for a while I bought every one I could find.

You can never have too many monsters, that's what I say.

In No Shape to Play

Drat. I'm so out of practice that it only just occurred to me that the baby's been asleep for an hour, and I could have been playing Skyrim all this time.

But I'm so out of practice that I hesitate to start now, because it will probably take me half an hour to remember the controls, and I can't stay up late playing unless I want to be really tired all day tomorrow, because I certainly can't plan on sleeping in.

Maybe tomorrow night.

In the meantime, I recommend this interesting story by Jay Stanley on Blog of Rights. He lost his credit card, and in order to prove that he was himself and get a new one, had to correctly answer a question based on information "obtained from third-party information services."

It turned out that the third-party information service was wrong, meaning that he couldn't prove he was himself.

The piece has interesting thoughts about account security (good in principle, but if it's so secure you can't access it, that's a problem); creepy information gathering (some company out there is just collecting bits of possibly-correct information about you and selling it to other companies for 'security' questions and who knows what else, and you have no real way to know what they have on file for you or correct any errors); and the way that even though we often hate phone trees* and assume that "getting to a human" will help resolve a problem, in this case "there was little difference between computer agent and human agent" because the human had no authority to override the computer.


*Not me, I love phone trees and will happily push buttons all day rather than talk to a person, as long as I can actually accomplish what I need to. But then, I hate people and can hardly wait for the arrival of our robot overlords. As long as they can get stuff done.

Important Reading Update

I have much to catch up with online, but have been spending most of my non-work time either unpacking or reading.

I wanted to finish Neal Stephenson's  Reamde before I gave it back to the library whence it came. Which turned out to be a slight challenge, partly because it's over 1000 pages and I started it while we were moving, but also because I stopped reading it in the middle so I could read N.K. Jemison's The Kingdom of Gods, which I checked out of the library later but wanted to read even more.

So I wound up keeping Reamde a day late, possibly the first time I have ever had an overdue library book, because I really wanted to finish it (and couldn't renew it, since other people had it on hold after me).

I guess this speaks well for both books--I put all else aside because I couldn't wait to read The Kingdom of Gods, and I committed the grave misdeed of keeping a library book late because I couldn't let Reamde go unfinished.

Good work, authors, writing books I must read even when packing, moving and unpacking!

Now, all finished with these fine books, I should dedicate much more time to the unpacking, but it's also very tempting to play Mass Effect 3 instead. I was hoping to get through a significant portion of that before the baby, but it doesn't look as if that's going to happen, considering all the boxes everywhere, so I'll just have to do my best when I can. 

Entirely Too Busy

There's just too much going on right now.

We have to pack so we can move by the middle of the month, and we're having a baby at the end of the month, and now Mass Effect 3 is out. I so want to play it!--but I have this sense that the more responsible course would be to continue packing.

But I want to be playing it right now!

I'm still in the middle of Skyrim, too. Too much to do.

Then I see on Why Evolution is True that Oreos are 100 years old today. If I'd known sooner, I'd have gone out to get some, but I suppose it's just as well I didn't. It would only have been another thing I had to do, and I don't really have the time to plan a party right now.

Less Drama Than Expected

So being a vampire never did much for me in Oblivion--I just stopped sleeping, pretty much, and the negative effects were minimal--and it's turning out that being a werewolf isn't doing much in Skyrim, other than (conveniently!) preventing me from ever catching any of the weird diseases that abound, like 'rockjoint.'

It's true! Beast Blood makes you immune to everything. For that reason alone, I think werewolfhood has been good for me, although honestly I never remember to use my power and actually turn into a wolf, so I'm missing out on a lot of excitement.

I should also explain, though, that I have the good kind of werewolfiness, where I don't change form uncontrollably with the full moons (how does that work with two moons, come to think of it?) and kill everyone around me.

I can change any time I want! And only when I want!

But I like my greatsword and heavy armor so much, it just never occurs to me to turn into a wolf and maul enemies with my bare teeth. So yeah, I kind of expected the life of the werewolf to put more demands on me, but what can you do? I guess the pack isn't into hassling people.

Let's Play

I suppose we can't really claim this (via Geek Feminism) as unshakeable evidence for the beneficial powers of gaming, but we can certainly applaud and wish this 100-year-old woman much joy of her Nintendo DS.

Her gaming collection is reported to be, "mostly built around puzzle solving, along with titles that calls upon a player's artistic abilities, like "Art Academy." We also see her interacting with "Pictochat," so Kit uses her DS as a communication tool as well."

These aren't the games I tend to play, so I guess even if this were evidence of the beneficial powers of her games, it wouldn't say anything about games where you wander around getting in fights and looting bodies, but as long as we're applauding, we might as well lump all games together and applaud them equally.

Pass It On

In addition to clothing swaps, I also like the idea of Freecycle--an email list that you can join where people post things they're looking to pass along, and other people who might be able to use those things can snap them up.

I got some nice little thank-you cards that way, which I promptly used. Also, I got rid of a dorm fridge from college that I figured I was never going to need again.

And then, a month later, I really wished I still had it!--nah, just kidding. I'm always afraid if I get rid of something I'll wish later that I still had it, but I have never regretted giving that fridge to someone else who, I hope, got some good use out of it.

The only thing is, it does tend to get a little unwieldy with the back-and-forth email tag trying to figure out who's going to leave what where at what time so someone can pick it up, etc.

I'm hoping someone will come get some old board games we never play, but I don't know if I should just leave them in the lobby all night, since that might be a fire hazard or something.

You know I would feel terrible if our elderly neighbors were fleeing from a fire, tripped over our unwanted "Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit" on the way though the foyer, injured themselves, and had to be taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

I mean, if I'm going to get Evil Points, I want it to be for something more intentional, and more clever, than accidentally felling my neighbors with a board game.

Musing and Pondering

I tend to get kind of burned out on these giant Bethesda games after a while--there's just so much to do, and if you tend to be kind of a completist it can be overwhelming--but I'm having a leisurely go at Skyrim, and so far I am pleased to say that I have not been turned into a vampire.

Also, the people seem to be not quite as terrifyingly ugly as in previous Bethesda games I've played, so nice work there.

I suppose really I should just take a lesson from these games and learn to prioritize. Don't feel the need to try to do everything, for one cannot do absolutely everything in life, that's what these games tell me. Focus your energies on what matters to you, instead.

However grand your ambitions, you can't locate the missing family heirlooms of every person in the country! You can't clear every single cave of bandits! You can't mine every vein of ore or harvest every bunch of mountain flowers!

Also, when you try to carry too much, it slows you down, so you have to be willing to drop things and move on.

Yes, that's what I'm doing when I play games. Learning important lessons about life.

Cough, Gasp, Wheeze

I am becoming physically tired from coughing. And after another restless (though song-free) night, I woke up with a touch of conjunctivitis, which is just what I was in the mood for. It hasn't gotten worse over the course of the day, but still.

I think it's fair to say I am not in my best health ever.

I don't even have energy to play Skyrim. It's pathetic!

I got a good start on it last weekend, but then haven't been able to muster the will to get back to it since, what with all the sneezing and nose-blowing and coughing and waking up and the general weariness by the time I get home from work. (Though this time, contrary to an earlier prediction, my ailment has not developed into ague.)

Winter colds. My old arch-nemesis.

Wicked Games

I have finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and it was enjoyable--I cherished nearly every moment of climbing up on tall buildings, running along meticulously detailed streets and rooftops, and striking terror into the hearts of the wicked*--but it didn't really reveal everything I had wondered about.

My final reaction was along the lines of "that's all very well, glowing dude, but how does this explain why you made me [do something to] [someone] at the end of the last one?"

What about [someone], game? What about that? 

I know. Play another game, that's what. And I totally will.

But this is the question that haunts me, and don't think I'm going to forget about it. (Another question that haunts me is, why did they change Desmond's face? But whatever, I'll deal with that as a non-story issue.)

I especially cherished the moments of beating up minstrels. And the moments I added myself where the cry was "Knives! Knives for everyone!"


I'm in the middle of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, about violence and how it's declined from levels seen at previous points in history, and it does make me feel a little curious about how fun it is to pretend to beat up and assassinate people. My real life is pretty calm, so let's add some pretend violence!

I suppose this could be either the 'safety valve' theory (since there's always the strong chance that I would actually go out to beat up and assassinate people if I couldn't release my tensions by playing this game version instead), or, more likely, the theory that people can tell fiction from reality. A fictional story that resonates with a lot of people will often have some sort of conflict (many guides to storytelling say there has to be conflict), and that means that there will often be violence, which maybe is something we can enjoy in part because it's not something we would actually do.

Or that we have personal experience with, that might also help. I'd probably think it was less fun and more drudgery if I actually did have to climb towers and kill people for a living.

Siiigh...I do this all day and now you expect me to come home and pretend to do it in an old-timey setting? I want to play the Yardwork Simulator instead.



*And also into the hearts of all the random guards who crossed me. But look, if they don't want to die, they shouldn't try to keep me from running on rooftops and assassinating people. It's just common sense.

Yay! Boo!

My video game is here! This is not going to be good for my stupid novel, which I hate. Fortunately, I suppose, I have to share the game with my husband, so I won't be able to play it nonstop.

Not Feeling Fictional

November is coming up, and t'will be National Novel Writing Month once again, and I'm sitting around not having any inklings of ideas.

You can't start writing until November 1, so it's obviously OK not to have really fleshed anything out in mid-October, but in the past I at least had some loosely connected notions I'd been mulling over, and a kind of "here's where things will start" plan.

Now, I've really got nothing. Just not feelin' the inspiration. I'm feeling as if I may not get around to doing it this year, although I'll only be busier next year, so I kind of might as well go for it now.

I'm also concerned because the next Assassin's Creed comes out in November, and that will be very distracting. Veeeeeeeery distracting. Just thinking about it is distracting. Ah, to be climbing tall buildings right now!

Plus, there's all of this knitting to be done. It turns out I got way more yarn than I needed, but I wanted the free shipping that came with a $50 purchase!

Also, I'm a terrible judge of these things. It's like the time I needed to order an ethernet cable, and after considering the available lengths, decided 50 feet sounded about right.

Indeed. About right for when I need to take my computer out of the apartment and around the corner of the building. Which, you never know.

Be prepared by overestimating your need for everything, that's my motto.

This is why I really feel I should have about 8 or 10 novel ideas in mind if I'm going to tackle NaNoWriMo.

Eight or 10 ideas, 50 feet of cable, 20 balls of yarn, and a video game. That's preparation.

It's What I'd Do

Random thing I love today:

The citizens in L.A. Noire who, when you commandeer their vehicles with a brusque "Police emergency! Out of the car!" say "not on your life, buster!" even as they're obediently climbing out of the car.

So I'd say the main lesson of this game so far is that it's important to strongly express your dissatisfaction with a situation you find unfair, even if you don't feel it worth taking any real action over.

Complaining without doing anything! Truly a classic.

Game Night in the Lair

Since none of my legions of devoted followers will deign to live close enough to me to come over and play board games of an evening, my gracious spouse and I decided to try playing Arkham Horror with just the two of us.

This game is awesome, so you should come over and play, but it is also pretty hard to win. I've already been in the Asylum four times after facing horrors too awful to describe, and the Ancient One is going to awaken any minute now.

A fun thing about Arkham Horror is that you're not competing with your fellow player(s); you're both competing with hordes of monsters, cultists, and random gangs of thugs in an attempt to stop an ancient evil from rising and consuming the entire town, so it's a cooperative twist on the board game idea that is a bit different. You all win or lose together.

At the moment, we're clinging to life and sanity by a thread. It doesn't look good. On the other hand, I still have my trusty tommy gun, and if there's one quality you look for in a barely-sane gangster, it's a good relationship with a reliable tommy gun.

Wish us luck.


Update:
As feared, our scrappy two-person team of gangster and stage magician was eventually devoured by a horror from another world. It was close, though! We were within a single turn of victory when the beast awakened, so it could really have gone either way.

As it turned out, it went the wrong way. But sometimes that happens when you start poking around in mysteries the human mind was not built to comprehend.

Phenomenal Cosmic Laziness

For lo these many days, I have been impatiently saying to Google Chrome, every time I open a new tab, "no, I do not want Angry Birds!"

I know everyone in the world is playing Angry Birds, and I wish them joy of it, but I find it difficult to get really engaged in a game in which you can't regularly throw fireballs at people.

But Chrome kept recommending it, every single time. There would be this image of some angry birds in a shopping bag on every new tab, just waiting for me to download the game.

There's a "hide this" link to make it go away, but I didn't click it for ever so long because I wondered if Chrome would eventually recommend something else that I might find more intriguing.

Angry Wizards, perhaps.

Finally, giving up, I did say "hide this," and now it just shows me the adorable tiny images of my eight most frequently visited sites that were long Chrome's habitual new-tab fare. They're very helpful.

The crucial point I wish to make here is this: inertia is a powerful, powerful thing.

I have never been inclined to actually download Angry Birds, and all I had to do to make the ad go away was click a link, yet I could not be bothered to do so for...I don't know, I think it's been a couple of weeks.

It's somehow easier to think, every time I open a new tab, "no, I do not want Angry Birds!" than it is to move the mouse an inch and click. Irritable thinking is free! Mouse-moving requires precious, precious effort.

Also, of course, there's my general uneasiness at ruling things out. What if I were to click that link and Angry Birds were to go away and then minutes later I suddenly wanted it?

I would obviously never be able to find it on the internet without that helpful link. There's no way to locate things on the internet! Angry Birds will be lost to me forever!

Just at the point where you start being able to throw fireballs at people!

The mind is a strange place.

I Can Keep Silent No Longer

Speaking of health, and words, and games, all of which I have spoken of at various points in the past, I have a minor gripe with the term used for healing medication in the video game Dragon Age.

It has long troubled me, and now, after months of brooding, I can no longer keep my uneasiness to myself.

See, they call their main healing effect a "poultice," and a poultice is a sort of salve or mush that you smear on yourself. This is well and good, but their visual for the use of a "poultice" is that of a character raising a vial to the mouth and drinking.

This suggests that what they actually have is a healing "potion." A potion, as you may know, is a liquid, commonly consumed by drinking. It's a perfectly good word for a classic magical healing concept.

Poultice, on the other hand, is a perfectly good word for a less-commonly-used healing concept. If you want to give some love to a less-common word, I'm all for it, but be aware of what it actually means.

And if you mean people to be using a potion, just call it a potion. There's nothing wrong with potions.

That is all.

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Library Games

Remember the game where 500 people got to spend the night hunting for artifacts in the New York Public Library?

It took place on May 20, and Library Journal has a nice write-up of it. Sounds like a good time was had by all.

I think we should definitely get a similar game underway at my library soon. We're bound to have equal success, given that we are at least as renowned as the NYPL, and have at least as many cool things.

Oh, wait, actually we totally aren't and don't. We're scrappy, though.

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More on Armor

There's a hashtag on Twitter right now for #WomenFightersInReasonableArmor. People are posting depictions of, well, women fighters, in reasonable armor (i.e., armor that might be supposed to have some protective properties if you wore it into battle).

And I say...well...OK, I guess. I suppose that's one way to approach the question.

I continue to hold that the lightly armored male fighter is another sound choice, however. Who's with me? We can make this work!

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Putting on Your Armor

Speaking of the Chain Mail Bikini Thing, which I once was, I would like to salute Bethesda Softworks, maker of games including, to my knowledge, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and the Elder Scrolls games, particularly (to my knowledge) Oblivion.

Bethesda games are famous, among me and this guy I know, for having incredibly gorgeous scenery and kind of creepily ugly people. But one thing they do not do, in the games I have observed, is make much of the Chain Mail Bikini Thing.

You see a lot of characters, male and female, wearing either solid, workaday armor, or else the sort of regular clothing one might wear while going about one's day-to-day business in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or in a magic-infused realm threatened with apocalypse, depending on the game.

And there's none of that "this armor is pretty ordinary looking on a male character, but you put it on a female character and suddenly it makes a nice target area for your enemies by revealing the entire torso."

They're also pretty good about having the characters you run into be fairly evenly mixed between male and female, as well as possessing various skin tones.

Bethesda does not make my favorite games ever, but they've got some fun stuff going on, and I do appreciate the fact that they assume women as well as men would like to have some protection against injury when going into battle.

As previously stated, I would also accept men as well as women clad in nothing more than courage and magical sandals, but if not that, than actual armor for all characters is fine with me.

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